Samsung's woes highlight explosive limits of lithium batteries

Lithium-based batteries have been powering our portable devices for 25 years.
But consumer demand for smaller, longer lasting devices is forcing manufacturers to push the technology, battery experts say, testing the limits of how much energy they can safely pack into smaller spaces.
"A battery is really a bomb that releases its energy in a controlled way," says Qichao Hu, a former researcher at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and founder of SolidEnergy Systems, a battery startup.
"There are fundamental safety issues to all batteries, and as you get to higher energy... read more

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